All Things Dark and Dastardly

by Kaye George

  ALIENS V. FAT BASTARD

  Steven Metze

  The Godzillatron zoomed in on another running back twitching on the ground and struggling to keep his organs from spilling out onto the Astroturf. For those keeping track, and about seven billion sentient creatures were keeping track, the game was fast approaching forfeiting due to lack of living players on the side of the humans.

  To be clear, I hate football. Watching football, anyway. I have always found viewing people I don’t know competing in any sort of sport remarkably uninteresting. I didn’t mind playing football in high school—even though I didn’t know all the rules—because it helped me delay my family’s genetic weight problem and allowed me to check the "Lettered in Varsity Sport" box on my college applications. But like the rest of the world, I took notice when the outcome of one game in particular would decide the fate of my species.

  By all rights, the game for the ownership of Earth should have been soccer, and the competing team should have either been the Chinese, if chosen by population, or last year’s World Cup winners, if chosen by defending champions. However, the Zaubaz’ri didn’t have the patience to sit through the evolution of sports or Earth demographics on their way to the Sol system, and after reviewing the first decade or so of black and white television broadcasts, decided the most violent team sport with the biggest audience at the time would be where they would place this planet’s wager.

  At first, this thrilled the Americans.

  In their arrogance they figured that naturally they should be named the protectors of the planet. That was before they met the Zaubaz’ri face to face and read the rules changes.

  ***

  Down on the field, the running back’s twitching slowed as his life seeped out into the artificial field grass. Spike, the lanky Zaubaz’ri who had impaled the human with the entire length of a two foot long forearm spear, waved to the stands for applause. His buddy Bruiser howled in support from the end zone where he had methodically broken the backs of the three humans who’d managed touchdowns so far. The six-foot-tall Spike had more kills, but Bruiser—all eighteen feet five inches and 4,032 kgs of him, according to his trading card—by far dominated the playing field. His message was simple and elegant: You score, you die.

  The first two touchdowns demonstrated it the hard way. That hadn’t deterred the senior from some western school—Arizona, maybe?—from leaping across the goal line and flipping the bird just before Bruiser caught him, lifted him up, and bent him in half with a crack loud enough some of the stadium microphones picked it up and broadcast it around the world and up to a fleet of orbiting battle cruisers.

  Bruiser was the last line of defense, and more than all others he seemed to enjoy his role.

  Spike lowered his arms, a little disappointed at the lackluster reaction from the stands. By now both sides of the crowd had given up hoping for anyone mortally wounded to make it to the sideline medics. The medics had likewise learned not to push the rule that they had to stay on the sidelines, particularly after the first two doctors ran out onto the grass and an orbital microwave pulse made both their heads explode.

  As best I could tell, immediately after each player took a solid hit, slash or stab, the majority of the human spectators launched into a discussion either about possible strategies or about how MVPs from playoffs past could have tipped the tables. Really the crowd spoke about anything to avoid watching the ghastly scene play out in High Definition clarity on the 12,000 square foot screens above both sets of goalposts. Humans operated the cameras, but Zaubaz’ri ran the control room.

  I, on the other hand, spent my time contemplating how exactly I’d ended up in the stands and not one of the hordes of people watching from homes, bars, hotel rooms, or churches. Heads of state and their entourages took up most of the seats around me, with football experts, military strategists, and the occasional celebrity taking up the rest.

  ***

  "Some professors trace the origins of football back to a medieval game called Campan." Odd way to start a conversation in a Target food court, I’d thought at the time, but those were the first words spoken to me a week ago by the olive-skinned goddess with the black hair and matching eyes. I raised my eyebrows in feigned interest and nodded over my nitrate-filled quarter-pound hotdog. "Originally played in the center of some town where the objective was simply to get the ball to the outskirts. Really though, depending on how you trace it, you can go much further back."

  She introduced herself as Victoria, and managed to make the moment even more awkward when she offered her hand. Recently divorced and significantly overweight, I’d reeducated myself on exactly where I ranked in the singles game, and she was so young and far distant from my normal playing field that I pegged her as someone desperate enough to start up that conversation with an empty table, had that been her only option. If I’d thought social situations had been dominated with sports, fantasy sports, historic sports and sports trivia before, I begged for those days after the great American public learned that the Super Bowl to end all Super Bowls would mark them as either free to go about their lives or as targets for weapons with invisible beams capable of taking out entire countries per pull of the trigger.

  She continued on about the ancient history of sports while I pondered adding some of that squirt-from-a-plastic-tub chili to my hotdog. I’d been teased about my weight since high school, damned if I’d stick with dry salads and cheeseless sandwiches with the end of the world and the shadows of battle cruisers looming above in the day and night skies.

  "I don’t really like sports," I told her at last, hoping she’d either leave me to eat in peace or actually hit on me.

  She sighed. "Okay, I confess I came over here because you looked familiar and I can’t figure out where I know you from."

  "Well," I wiped my mouth with a tattered paper napkin, "unless you follow the video equipment repair crowd or went to Cleburne high school in the 80s…"

  "You used to play football there, didn’t you?" Her eyes lit up.

  "How in the hell do you know that?"

  "I was there, but more to the point, you made all the papers your sophomore year starting on the varsity team."

  My name had been on the small town sports page a few times, but I could only remember it as part of a bigger list of players.

  "Let’s see if I remember the story right," she continued with a youthful energy. "You were the one who broke his collar bone and kept playing because you didn’t want to let anyone down. Right?"

  "Wow, yes. True." That had been, essentially, the most famous I’d been my entire life. After a few years of coming to the realization that had been the peak of my existence, I’d motivated myself to quit thinking about it.

  "You kept spinning and turning trying to protect your shoulder and no one could figure out why until..." She squinted and held up her arms. "Wait, don’t tell me…" I didn’t, but mostly because I was piecing the same details together in my mind at the time. "Yeah. That fourth quarter play… on, like, the three yard line…"

  "Five yard line," I interrupted.

  "Right." She smiled and made eye contact before her eyes lost focus, watching a moment from the past. "Five yard line. When they called a play right up your right side and you had to block left. You opened the hole for the game winning touchdown and passed out from the pain."

  "I didn’t think anyone but my mom remembered that story. Well, and a few football über fans who obsess over moments like that twenty years later."

  "I’ll ignore the implication I’m an obsessed über fan." She’d returned to the present, and smirked as my expression revealed my embarrassment. "Honestly though, it was all over central Texas. Very big deal back in the day."

  "So you say."

  "I bet lots of people remember." She pulled a bottled water out from below the table and took a swig.

  Something about this woman’s voice, soft and resonant, convinced me to turn and take her all in. Impossibly white teeth, unblemished skin, long locks o
f curly obsidian dripping off her shoulders, she belonged in a comic book, or carved from marble on a pedestal in Europe.

  And yet she stayed with me that entire afternoon and on past nightfall—talking, walking, questioning my entire background but offering little of hers in return. Instead she imparted story after story from some piece of world history. I’d mention spraying sulfuric acid from syringes onto the pants of high school bullies to get back at them, and she’d say how that reminded her of the tale of some clever peasant defeating an evil overlord in Africa. An anecdote about a bigger kid squashing ketchup packets in my algebra book made her think of this legend she’d heard about a Chinese warrior, and so on.

  It ended in the parking lot of my festering apartment complex, her eyes glittering in the darkness. "I’m sorry you never got another chance to compete again after football," she said, changing the topic from favorite Karate movies so suddenly that it left me with non sequitur whiplash.

  "I was too small." I couldn’t think of how else to respond.

  "You made varsity your sophomore year because you could out block anyone on the team." She crossed her arms.

  "Yeah, one play, maybe two. All they had to do was lean on me and by the third play I was too exhausted to move."

  "You put everything you had into those first two plays, though." She cocked her head to one side, examining my reaction. All I managed was a light shrug. "You should get back into sports."

  "You say that like…" I stopped before I could add, "…like I wasn’t pushing three hundred pounds…" or "…like I don’t get winded halfway up one flight of stairs…" or "…like we have any time."

  "I hear there is a game this Saturday." She held out her hand, and I recognized the security hologram labels catching the reflection of the streetlights. I glanced at it and then back to her eyes, waiting for the punch line. A verified seat in the nosebleed section of the end zone sold for seven figures on Ebay.

  "I’ll be working up in the booth," she said. "Got one comp ticket as part of the deal."

  She took my hand, placed the square of plastic on my palm, and folded my fingers over it. It was the only time we touched, and the last time I ever saw her, but I remember every point of the warmth that brushed my skin and sent tingles up my arm.

  ***

  The sharp jolt of a ref’s whistle brought me back. I’d somehow missed the runner expiring, the immediate clean up, and the set up for a new play. For the thousandth time I stared at the scoreboard. The Zaubaz’ri were master showmen, and I suspected that they’d deliberately held their lead to just five points ahead of the humans to foster an air of hope until the very last minute.

  I glanced up at their emperor as he hovered above the field on a throne set on an ornate golden disk. Without blinking or speaking, he rested his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee, staring down at the game, emotionless as far as I or any other human could tell. Periodically he’d make the smallest of gestures and his assistant would either announce some ruling or make some unheard communication to more of the Zaubaz’ri empire.

  A tired voice over the loudspeaker mentioned the last human substitution filling in for the recent loss, someone named Thompson. In a half-hearted attempt at humor, the idiot commentator went on to emphasize that the bench was now officially empty, everyone else was dead, and that if the humans were going to step up their game, now would be the time.

  He ended by announcing that we had the stainless steel ball back on our own twenty yard line, but with the customary first down granted after each player fatality.

  "C’mon, Thompson!" A man in a disheveled silk suit yelled down at the newest player on the field. Someone had painted a professional quality image of the Earth across his face. "You can do it!" I heard no hope in the man’s voice, only simple volume and superstitious fear of what would happen if he didn’t shout something. Just past him a group of Thai delegates stood on top of a wrinkled "Go Humans!" banner they no longer had the strength to hold up. Two of them hugged, and half the rest stood silently weeping.

  Another whistle.

  Thompson squeaked out a few yards on his first play, and now rose up off the turf, prying himself out from beneath the two armored linemen named Mangler and Smasher. Honestly, other than Spike and Bruiser, I hadn’t paid any attention to who was who, and only picked up the names of both side’s players through subtitles on the giant screen. The view zoomed in while stylized graphics in six human languages and three alien ones diagrammed out Thompson’s new wounds. Scratches for the most part, one gash on his thigh that the medics quickly healed with donated Zaubaz’ri technology.

  The quarterback yelled some meaningless numbers to the line and the center snapped him the ball. He pedaled backwards and pumped a fake throw before passing it to Thompson crossing across behind him. The new runner flew between a pair of lineman and bounced off a shoulder slam from one of the linebackers. Stunned, he stumbled right into Spike’s path, who took the opportunity to slash his blade across Thompson’s neck instead of the signature impaling. A few screams of denial rang out, but otherwise the crowd fell silent. Both sides of the crowd.

  Spike looked up at his master and seemed to shrink with realization at what he had done. A shift in the emperor’s stance said it all. The game had nearly a whole quarter to go, and Spike had just needlessly ended it early. The emperor rose, his first movement of the day, and stood rigidly watching the bleeding human on the gigantic screen. Thompson went a lot faster than his predecessor, and when the sensors declared him dead the emperor let out what I am absolutely certain is the worst profanity possible for his species.

  Spike backed up a few steps. The sounds of human sobbing echoed across the field. The emperor spoke something softly to his assistant.

  "In his magnificence," the assistant’s voice poured out from the loudspeakers first in his native tongue, and then in electronically modulated English, "the emperor has declared the game will play out its fully allotted time." The crowd shuffled a bit, a cacophony of useless thoughts murmured aloud. The Zaubaz’ri assistant leaned forward for a moment, probably to get further instructions from his leader as the emperor returned to his seat. "The humans will have a randomly chosen substitute to replace the player known as Thompson."

  The instant he finished speaking, little green lasers shot out from just above the main control booth, holding tiny emerald dots on the foreheads of every human in the stands. I felt no comfort knowing that had His Magnificence wished it, each of those beams could have gone in one side of each target and out the other with equal ease.

  In rapid succession, lasers blinked off. No, they didn’t blink off, they simply switched aimpoints, flashing around from forehead to forehead in a mad random light display until suddenly they all vanished at once.

  Except they hadn’t all vanished, of course. The horrified stares of the people around me told me exactly where the green glows finally rested.

  They looked at me, all of them, everyone on the planet and hovering above it, and they all saw the destiny of mankind tossed into the lap of an overweight slacker with pasty skin and long greasy hair. The Zaubaz’ri on the field and in the far bleachers seemed amused. I think Bruiser might even have licked his lips.

  "You…" the man with the globe for a face said to me in a subdued voice, "… you go get ‘em, big guy."

  A prickling grew in my hand where Victoria’s fingers had touched them the week before, sending what felt like burning fluid up the veins of my forearm. Without remembering how it started, I felt myself moving, then jogging, then walking again and trying to conceal my heavy breathing on the way down towards the field. An unenthusiastic applause followed me as I went. My image flew up on the Godzillatron, my face a hundred feet wide, and then I heard a voice calling down from the biggest sound system in history.

  Victoria’s voice.

  "You think you’ve chosen a useless specimen to play against you," she said in a clear calm tone. "But that is only because he’s elected to take this humble form."<
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  Faces stared at me as I passed, wondering if this could have been some sort of rehearsed moment.

  "What you see before you is a creature as old as the human race itself," she continued. The tingling in my arm grew and spread into my chest. Her touch, still with me, spread into my lungs and breathing grew effortless. "He rose from the small crowd gathered around that first contest of physical prowess deep in the heart of the African jungle." A few people slapped my shoulders as I turned down the steps. Even fewer clapped. The prickling feeling grew to a low heat and flowed out to the tips of all four limbs. "He is the Hail Mary pass, the 715th homerun, and the World Cup player screaming, crying and thanking the heavens for his goal." By now the crowd started to take notice of the words themselves. I focused more on the sensation that while her voice was up there, some part of her burned hot in my chest and temples.

  "He passed the first Olympic torch." And as I reached the barrier around the field I actually remembered holding a handful of woven reeds and dipping them into a flame. Two alien guards powered down the energy field and opened the stairs for me. "He skated in 1980, he ran in 1936, and he circled the bases barefoot in 1908."

  Two people in matching shorts and t-shirts ran over and eased a pair of Kevlar reinforced shoulder pads over my head, then sat me down to swap my worn tennis shoes for steel-spiked cleats. Only a handful of people noticed, but when they slipped the jersey on, the number changed from twenty-three to twelve. "They’ve known him as Hastseltsi, Tyr, Kathyayini, and Nike. In modern times they call him the Twelfth Man, the Spirit of Competition, or simply the Underdog." Her memories, blending with mine. She was talking about herself, and now I was her vessel. Someone pushed a helmet down onto my head, still wet with what I hoped was just sweat.